Elbert's Bad Word

Elbert's Bad Word, by Audrey Wood

During an elegant garden party, Elbert hears a word that is new to him. A bad, dirty word. However, in the story, he sees the word as a piece of filthy fuzz floating through the air. He decides to put it in his back pocket, and even though he forgets about it, it creeps up to his head and into his mouth. When an incident at the party occurs, Elbert releases the once little fuzz as a HUGE, loud, extremely ugly monster. Elbert's mother makes him wash his mouth out, however the little fuzz still sits on his shoulder and in his mind. He goes to a practicing wizard, who devises a solution to get rid of the bad word from Elbert once and for all. He gives Elbert a different bunch of "strong words" to replace his one big bad word to help him express his emotions in a better way.

At another party after he is given better word choices, another incident happens where he is forced to test the spell the wizard gave him. Instead of using the monster bad word, he uses a great deal of his words from his "strong word" choices, which pleases everyone at the party and makes them all so happy that the bad word did not come out again!

This is an interesting book to read to children, because it really does present a strong message; once children are exposed to a bad word, they have it in their vocabulary and it is often hard to get rid of, if at all. This might be because if someone overreacts to the word being used by a child, the child knows it is bad and will illicit a response from adults for some reason. However, this book will lightly explain "strong/weak" words, instead of "good/bad" words, without going into detail about why exactly the word is so negative. I think that the authors did the right thing by saying "strong/weak" words because it shows children that there are right and wrong ways to express themselves, even with "weak" words that are better than "bad" words. An all around good book to read to students if an incident ever occurred in the classroom similar to Elbert's.